The Twilight of the American Enlightenment
- Author George M. Marsden
- Narrator William Hughes
- Publisher Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date 11 February 2014
- Run Time 6 hours and 24 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Centrist democratic ideologies, General and world history, History of the Americas, Religion and politics, Right-of-centre democratic ideologies.
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What to expect
In the aftermath of World War II, the United States stood at a precipice. The forces of modernity unleashed by the war had led to astonishing advances in daily life, but technology and mass culture also threatened to erode the country's traditional moral character. As award-winning historian George M. Marsden explains in The Twilight of the American Enlightenment, postwar Americans looked to the country's secular liberal elites for guidance in this precarious time, but these intellectuals proved unable to articulate a coherent common cause by which America could chart its course. Their failure lost them the faith of their constituents, paving the way for a Christian revival that offered America a firm new moral vision—one rooted in the Protestant values of the founders.
A groundbreaking reappraisal of the country's spiritual reawakening, The Twilight of the American Enlightenment shows how America found new purpose at the dawn of the Cold War.
Critics Review
“[Marsden’s] critique of the consensus culture of the 1950s
is original and persuasive, and he is dead right to contend, with [Abraham]
Kuyper and his intellectual heirs, that the idea of ‘neutrality’ is a sham. Mr.
Marsden’s book won’t bring resolution to the conflicts over abortion or
same-sex marriage, but his reflections should remind us that America is still
ours: We don’t have to take it back.”
“Under the surface of a seemingly placid era roiled a cauldron of doubts and discontent, according to this penetrating study of post-war intellectual ferment…Marsden’s erudite, sophisticated, but very accessible study reveals the suppressed spiritual hunger of a secular age.”
“Marsden employs historical analysis to suggest why the United States is so badly split between secular-oriented intellectuals and religiously doctrinaire church leaders, a split that seems to have harmed the nations moral character, forged during World War II…An important discourse.”
“This remarkable book
gives us an insightful narrative of how we have gotten to our present failure
to manage increasingly diverse cultural realities in North
America. Marsden charts the various efforts over several decades in the
last century to sustain a pluralism on the basis of a cultural consensus—both
‘atheists for Niebuhr’ and the New Religious Right had their own versions of
this project. In exposing the underlying reasons for their failure, Marsden
points the way to a challenging but exciting journey toward a truly inclusive
pluralism.”
“George Marsden’s learned and accessible analysis
of the intellectual culture of the 1950s is must reading for anyone trying to
make sense of our current debates over religion in American public life.”
“In this compact but powerful analysis of
American life and thought in the years since the Second World War, George Marsden
shows why neither a triumphant secular liberalism nor a restored religious
consensus can serve as a rallying point for national unity. Instead, he makes a
case for a pluralism that treats the widest possible range of religious and
nonreligious perspectives as equally deserving of protections and recognition,
and rejects the privatization of religious speech and expression. The result is
a book that is as much about dawning as about twilight, one that not only
provides a fresh and compelling view of postwar America, but offers a fresh
vision of the road ahead.”
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